Labor Economics Commons^™

Individual Training Accounts And Nonstandard Work Arrangements, Randall W. Eberts

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This paper was commissioned by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) to describe the use of Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and under its predecessor the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). Particular interest is in the use of ITAs by WIOA participants from nonstandard work arrangements. The study provides detailed information about the use of ITAs by participants of the two adult programs under WIOA, Disadvantaged Adult Programs and Dislocated Worker Programs, and in two states, Michigan and Washington. Information for the WIOA programs is gathered and analyzed from the public-use version of …

Settling In: The Consequences Of Legal Origins And Institutional Variety For Immigrant Labor Market Integration In Oecd Countries, Jennifer Kuklenski

Dissertations

Drawing upon theories of institutional variety, this research seeks to determine whether or not immigrant labor market outcomes are better in countries with 1) liberal market economies and deregulated labor markets; and 2) countries with supply-driven immigration systems. Non-parametric Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Mann-Whitney U tests are combined with parametric time series, GLS regression analysis of panel data to estimate the impact and significance of legal origins (common versus civil law systems) and merit-based immigration policy on 1) labor market participation; 2) unemployment; and 3) employment by educational attainment in 28 OECD countries between the years 2001-2016. The analysis controls for other …

Essays On Human Capital Formation In Developing Countries, Alexander Sergeevich Ugarov

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Differences in human capital explain approximately one-half of the productivity variation across countries. Therefore, we need to understand drivers of human capital accumulation in order to design successful development policies. My dissertation studies formation and use of human capital with emphasis on its less tangible forms, including skills, abilities and know-how.

The first chapter of my dissertation explores the effects of occupational and educational barriers on human capital stock and aggregate productivity. I find that students' academic skills have very small impact on occupational choice in most developing countries. This finding suggests a higher incidence of occupational barriers in developing …

Does The Healthcare Educational Market Respond To Short-Run Local Demand?, Marcus Dillender, Andrew Friedson, Cong Gian, Kosali Simon

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased demand for healthcare across the U.S., but it is unclear if or how the supply side has responded to meet this demand. In this paper, we take advantage of plausibly exogenous geographical heterogeneity in the ACA in order to examine the response of the healthcare education sector to increased demand for healthcare services. We look across educational fields, types of degrees, and types of institutions; we pay particular attention to settings where our conceptual model predicts heightened responses. We find no statistically significant evidence of increases in graduates and can rule …

Should Place-Based Jobs Policies Be Used To Help Distressed Communities?, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Should policymakers seek to increase jobs in particular local labor markets? Yes, but only if these policies are well targeted and designed. Encouraging job growth in distressed places can cause persistent gains in employment-to-population ratios. But our current place-based jobs policies, under which state and local governments provide long-term tax incentives to megacorporations, are poorly targeted and designed. Such incentives are as large in nondistressed areas as in distressed areas, and they are excessively costly. What reforms are needed? First, job growth policies should target distressed areas. Second, tax incentives should be focused on high-multiplier businesses, such as high-tech firms. …

Computerization Of White Collar Jobs, Marcus Dillender, Eliza C. Forsythe

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We investigate the impact of computerization of white-collar jobs on wages and employment. Using online job postings from 2007 and 2010-2016 for office and administrative support (OAS) jobs, we show that when firms adopt new software at the job-title level they increase the skills required of job applicants. Furthermore, firms change the task content of such jobs, broadening them to include tasks associated with higher-skill office functions. We aggregate these patterns to the local labor-market level, instrumenting for technology adoption with national measures. We find that a 1 standard deviation increase in OAS technology usages reduces employment in OAS occupations …

Do Rent Increases Reduce The Housing Supply Under Rent Control? Evidence From Evictions In San Francisco, Brian Asquith

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Rent control balances strong tenant protections with supply-side incentives for landlords. However, cities with rent control are also some of the United States' most unaffordable, prompting questions about how well these incentives are working. I examine how controlled landlords change their housing supply in response to price increases using a well-identified hyperlocal demand shock the privately operated commuter shuttle systems in San Francisco. Controlled landlords increased market withdrawal filings and became less likely to create vacancies via evictions in response to a shuttle stop placement. Policies raising barriers to market withdrawals prompted controlled landlords to respond my increasing their at-fault …

Bias And Productivity In Humans And Machines, Bo Cowgill

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Where should better learning technology (such as machine learning or AI) improve decisions? I develop a model of decision-making in which better learning technology is complementary with experimentation. Noisy, inconsistent decision-making introduces quasi-experimental variation into training datasets, which complements learning. The model makes heterogeneous predictions about when machine learning algorithms can improve human biases. These algorithms can remove human biases exhibited in historical training data, but only if the human training decisions are sufficiently noisy; otherwise, the algorithms will codify or exacerbate existing biases. Algorithms need only a small amount of noise to correct biases that cause large productivity distortions. …

Should We Target Jobs At Distressed Places, And If So, How?, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Costs And Benefits Of A Revised Foxconn Project, Timothy J. Bartik

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Oppressive Pressures Of Globalization And Neoliberalism On Mexican Maquiladora Garment Workers, Jenna Demeter

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The international economic trends of globalization and neoliberalism have exposed and enabled the exploitation of Mexican workers, especially women in the maquiladora garment industry. During the 1950s, globalization gave rise to the new international division of labor and transnational corporations (TNCs) that have offshored labor-intensive phases of production to developing countries, many of which have pursued export-led industrialization. Export processing in Mexico was encouraged in the 1960s by Item 807 of the U.S. Tariff Code and Mexico’s Border Industrialization Program. Especially following the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, advanced capitalist countries and International Financial Institutions foisted neoliberal structural …

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: July 24, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) 1 fell by 0.29% during June of 2019. The decline in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, implies slowing economic growth in Nebraska towards the end of 2019. The leading indicator declined due to an increase in initial claims for unemployment insurance and a drop in both airport passenger enplanements and manufacturing hours. In addition, business expectations, which had been strong throughout the year, moderated during June. Respondents to the June Survey of Nebraska Business reported plans for only a modest increase in employment at …

The Effect Of New Market-Rate Housing Construction On The Low-Income Housing Market, Evan Mast

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Keeping It Real: Information Literacy, Numeracy, And Economic Data, Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Charissa O. Jefferson, Katrina L. Stierholz

Numeracy

We describe a pedagogical strategy aimed at developing both quantitative and information literacy skills through a social justice lens. This lesson plan is suitable for a variety of high school and introductory college courses. The student learning goals associated with this pedagogical strategy span three intellectual domains: social justice, through a critical exploration of either the purchasing power of minimum wages across states or the earnings gap between men and women employed full time; numeracy, through the computation of ratios between variables with different rates of growth over time; and information literacy, through a series of activities …

Medical Innovation And The Employment Of Cancer Patients, R. Vincent Pohl

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Education And Marriage Decisions Of Japanese Women And The Role Of The Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Linda N. Edwards, Takuya Hasebe, Tadashi Sakai

Publications and Research

The Japanese Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA) of 1985 aimed to reduce gender discrimination in the labor market, especially for career-oriented jobs. This paper investigates whether this act had an unanticipated effect on women's marriage decisions. Using micro data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, we model women's interrelated decisions on university education and whether to marry, focusing on whether women have married by age 32. Our results show a negative relationship between university education and marriage that is much greater for post-EEOA cohorts of women than for pre-EEOA cohorts, consistent with our hypothesis that the enhanced career opportunities …

Search And Multiple Jobholding, Etienne Lalé

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

A search-theoretic model of the labor market with idiosyncratic fluctuations in hours worked, search both off- and on-the-job, and multiple jobholding is developed. Taking on a second job entails a commitment to hold onto the primary employer, enabling the worker to use the primary job as her outside option to bargain with the secondary employer. The model performs well at explaining multiple jobholding inflows and outflows, and it is informative for understanding the secular decline in multiple jobholding. While some worry that this decline heralds a less-flexible labor market, the model reveals that it has contributed to reducing search frictions.

Multiple Jobholding: Knowing The Facts To Draw Proper Policy Conclusions, Etienne Lalé

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Medical Innovation And The Employment Of Cancer Patients, R. Vincent Pohl

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: June 19, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) rose by 0.63% during May of 2019. The increase in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, implies moderate economic growth in Nebraska through the end of 2019. Strong business expectations were the sole reason for the increase in the leading indicator. Respondents to the May Survey of Nebraska Business reported plans to increase both sales and employment at their businesses over the next six months. Other components were mixed with airport passenger enplanments, initial claims for unemployment insurance and building permits for single-family homes pointing …

Place-Based Jobs Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Job-Interview Referrals Help Brazilians Find Formal-Sector Jobs, Christopher J. O'Leary, Túlio Cravo, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Job Referrals On Labor Market Outcomes In Brazil, Christopher J. O'Leary, Túlio Cravo, Ana Cristina Sierra, Leandro Justino Veloso

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper is the first to use program administrative data from Brazil’s National Employment System (SINE) to assess the impact of SINE job interview referrals on labor market outcomes. Data for a five-year period (2012–2016) are used to evaluate the impact of SINE on employment probability, wage rates, time until reemployment, and job tenure. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that a SINE job interview referral increases the probability of finding a job within three months of the referral and reduces the number of months to find reemployment, the average job tenure of the next job, and the reemployment wage. Subgroup analysis suggests …

Nebraska Monthly Economic Indicators: May 22, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

The Leading Economic Indicator – Nebraska (LEI-N) rose by 0.79% during April of 2019. The increase in the LEI-N, which is designed to predict economic activity six months into the future, implies moderate economic growth in Nebraska through the end of 2019. Strong business expectations were again the primary reason for the increase in the leading indicator. Respondents to the April Survey of Nebraska Business reported plans to increase both sales and employment at their businesses over the next six months. There also was growth in manufacturing hours-worked during the month.

Can Antipoverty Policies Change Neighborhood Outcomes In The Long Run?, Brian J. Asquith

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Longer-Run Effects Of Antipoverty Policies On Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, David Neumark, Brian J. Asquith, Brittany Bass

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the longer-run effects of minimum wages, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and welfare on key economic indicators of economic self-sufficiency in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We find that the longer-run effects of the EITC are to increase employment and to reduce poverty and public assistance. We also find some evidence that higher welfare benefits had longer-run adverse effects, and quite robust evidence that tighter welfare time limits reduce poverty and public assistance in the longer run. The evidence on the long-run effects of the minimum wage on poverty and public assistance is not robust, with some evidence pointing to reductions …

Fresh Blood In The Labor Market: Challenges And Rewards Of China's Returning Millennial Generation, Xinyu Li

Master's Projects and Capstones

In recent years, fresh blood has begun to emerge in China’s workplace: Chinese millennials who have gone abroad to study and received an overseas education. This special experience has brought many obstacles for them when they return to the Chinese workplace, whether it is the lack of synchronization between recruitment and graduation periods in the early stage of job seeking, or the pressure they encounter later. However, this experience also creates a set of unique advantages for them. Accepting international higher education makes their resumes more attractive, brings them a global perspective, and cultivates their ability to learn new skills …

The National-Level Economic Impact Of The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Mep): Estimates For Fiscal Year 2018, Jim Robey, Randall W. Eberts, Brian Pittelko, Claudette Robey

Reports

No abstract provided.

Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Multiplicity Of Equilibria In A Directed Search Model Of The Labor Market, Nicolas L. Jacquet, John Kennes, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies a directed search model of the labour market, which is standard in all aspects except two. First, we allow firms to post wage–vacancy contracts advertising the number of workers they would pay as well as the payment all will receive. Second, we consider two cases: one where workers are risk neutral and one where workers are risk averse, both in finite and large economies. Our paper shows that when firms post wage–vacancy contracts, whether workers are modelled as risk neutral or risk averse matters: the types of symmetric equilibria and the nature of multiplicity of equilibria are …

Essays On Paid Family Leave In The United States, Beila R. Leboeuf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: The first chapter is a literature survey that reviews the empirical research conducted on paid family leave in the United States. This chapter summarizes the documented benefits of paid family leave on women's labor force participation, leave usage, and children's health. Also, evidence that suggests potentially harmful effects of paid family leave is discussed. Possible directions for future research are explored, and the chapter concludes by considering the implementation of a national paid family leave program in the United States.

Chapter 2: The second chapter replicates and extends the results of Rossin-Slater et al. (2013). The purpose of …